Dr. Christoph Schaniel in 2007-06/2008 appointed as Instructor in Department of Gene and Cell Medicine, and The Black Family Stem Cell Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY In 2008-05/2011 Assistant Professor (Research track) Department of Gene and Cell Medicine, and The Black Family Stem Cell Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY In 2011-11/2012 Assistant Professor (Research track) Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, and The Black Family Stem Cell Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY In 2012-present Assistant Professor (Investigator track, primary appointment) Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, and The Black Family Stem Cell Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 1/2014-present Assistant Professor (Investigator track, secondary appointment) Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY

The discovery that specialized, adult somatic cells when exposed to pluripotency-associated factors or microRNAs (miRs), can become plastic and regain embryonic stem cell (ESC) characteristics was a groundbreaking advance in stem cell research. This induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, especially when applied to patient-samples, has brought great excitement because it generates an unlimited source of cells capable of differentiation to any cell type, to model human diseases in a dish, to understand underpinning mechanism(s) in a disease-relevant cell-context, to develop diagnostics and novel (personalized) therapeutic strategies and to test a drug’s efficacy and adverse effects by a “clinical trial in a dish”.